


Cinnamon Butterscotch

by orphan_account



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Gen, mentions of self harm
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-27
Updated: 2015-12-27
Packaged: 2018-05-09 16:39:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,513
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5547629
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A character study (ish) of Chara and Frisk, post-tainted (after no mercy) pacifist run. </p>
<p>(Inspired by Draikinator's "You Wear Your Grief Like a Badge" and my own headcanons for these two poor children)</p>
            </blockquote>





	Cinnamon Butterscotch

. . .

 

It’s Chara who does this to your body, but you don’t particularly mind enough to tell them to stop.

They mostly are active in the evening; you tend to slink to the back of the headspace to sleep by eight, but Chara tends to be awake until around ten or eleven. You constantly need to remind them to go to bed early; it does no good for your body to be so exhausted in the morning, but Chara wakes it up often with night terrors. You tend to sleep through those; you might share some memories and thoughts, but dreams have always been a separate matter for the two of you.

This must have been another one of those nights, because you wake up exhausted with small scratches around your elbows. Chara is silent; you can feel them sleeping. You can’t ask or see anything from last night until they wake up, so you pull on a long sleeved sweater and don’t question it.

The scratches sting as the fabric brushes against them, and you could probably get Chara to stop if you badgered them about it long enough (they’re usually pretty good at reaching compromises on what you two do with your body), but you feel a grim satisfaction from the burning sensation.

You have a difficult time dealing with the older child; they’re thirteen, frozen at that age when they died, and they often hide things from you because of it. Not that you would want to know what they think about all the time, anyway – you both share thoughts, but you also both have your own secret thoughts to yourself. But things like the arm scratching never come up between you, and it satisfies you both in its own way, so you let it go.

 

. . .

 

Frisk is busy making cinnamon cookies with Mom, and you silently curl your lip; you were always a fan of a more heavy butterscotch flavor, but they shake out large amounts of spice into the mixture anyway. Frisk gives you a mental jab in the arm and tells Mom to cut off the cinnamon. She smiles lovingly down at you both, and you close your eyes (inwardly; Frisk returns the eye contact and a smile) to her.

She doesn’t know you’re here – that was your reluctant bargain with Frisk. Having their soul to pad the fragmented bits of yours makes you feel more sentimental again, less like the malevolent being you had followed them through the underground as.

Of course, you were only here in the first place because you won Frisk over during a reset too many, but they don’t know about the resets as well as you do.

(You suspect the skeleton remembers, or at least knows the resets happened, but he never presses Frisk about it and so you don’t mention it. It’s not worth it anymore.)

You stir the batter for Frisk, because they lack any sort of upper body strength to get the right consistency quickly – to think that they can’t even stir _cookie mix,_ you grumble, as you aggressively stir. Mom tells you to calm down, and you relax your stirring to a slower pace.

Your sweater sleeves are rolled up; she healed your cuts earlier, as you lied and stammered and said you slammed your arms into the dresser by accident. (You said this – Frisk is a poor liar.)

Frisk seems to think she doesn’t know the real source of them, but you’re pretty sure your mother wasn’t born yesterday. She definitely knows, if the extra fluff you both are getting today is any indication.

Maybe she is this nice – you don’t remember all that much of your human life with her prior to this, anyway.

You do wonder why Frisk doesn’t stop you from cutting your shared body up, though.

Maybe they remember more than you think.

 

. . .

 

You mostly stay inside during the day.

Being the ambassador is so tiring for someone as young as you, who has barely any knowledge of politics; Chara chimes in sometimes, but it’s mostly Mom and Asgore, separately, who help you out with those things. You deal more with bringing people together emotionally rather than in an official way.

Thus far, your efforts have been surprisingly successful; Chara is silent at how the years have changed humanity since 201X, and how much has progressed. It’s still a trial, though, and Chara always chimes in to remind you that humans “fucking suck” and will probably fight the monsters at any point again.

You often feel Chara isn’t entirely truthful in their hatred of humanity. They haven’t shown you any of their memories for seeking out the underground, but that’s okay with you – you don’t share your story of heading to Mount Ebott, either. You do, though, feel the small pieces of them meshing tighter against your own soul – not as if they were the demon who took it, but like a frightened and frozen child, huddling around a fire for warmth.

 

. . .

 

A demon, is the thing Frisk called you. You mean, you were sure as shit not the red deviled creature that the stupid kid across the street always dresses up for Halloween, but memories of a melting face and howling laughter flicker across the back of Frisk’s mind.

You were a lot scarier than red horned devil kid, haha.

Before taking Frisk’s soul and allowing them one final reset, you felt nothing. Almost nothing – you felt a pressing hatred for humans, for monsters, for everyone. Something called you, awoke the scattered pieces of your soul after Asriel and you combined them, and brought you back.

But finally taking Frisk’s soul gave you back something you’d forgotten, something for your shattered soul’s pieces to cling to – hope.

You block this thought off from Frisk, always, but they truly do have the most powerful soul you’ve ever seen – the most beautiful, the warmest, the most determined being that it floors you sometimes.

You realize you sound stupid, though, and immediately cut yourself off before you start throwing up fluff or something. That’s exactly what Frisk’s soul does to you – makes you into a mushy gushy _fluff_ when all you’d rather do is go slash someone’s tires. You instead want to bake cookies with Mom, want to read children’s books with Papyrus and Sans at sleepovers, want to take dance lessons with Mettaton, want to do all that friendshippy campy bullshit that you hate.

But you love it all the same, and you really hate Frisk for it.

 

. . .

 

It wasn’t Chara who pushed you to hurt everyone, though.

They told you that you showed them how – you showed them how to cause pain, how to destroy, how to bring about the destruction of both the worlds beyond and behind the barrier.

You would have known if it was Chara, but it was a bigger force than either the two of you could hope to match.

Chara’s soul drifts helplessly around yours – without yours, they would likely not exist. They are able to speak and look through your eyes and move your hands and feet only because of your whole human soul that you both share.

Chara is a more violent person than you – you can see some of their memories and feel their impulses to do bad things. Never as extreme as you both had gone before – they just want to egg the boy across the street’s house, for some reason, or slash Papyrus’ car tires.

You can’t bear the thought of what happened before, and Chara doesn’t ever press on it. They only remind you sometimes that you did it, with those hands, even as you reset and freed everyone after. You can’t erase your sins, and Chara is your reminder of this every day.

You don’t regret giving your soul up. Chara is frightened, probably more than you think they realize themselves, but the bits and pieces of them cling to you and hold on as if you are the only thing holding them down, now that Asriel is gone. Chara is a good friend, anyway. They kind of have some violent intrusive thoughts from time to time, but they never act on them unless it’s small and you compromise.

(TP’ing Mettaton’s house with Sans and Chara was a very fun time, you must admit.)

You feel like they’re closest to you, if only because of what you both share and know.

You both can’t erase your previous saves; they still exist, pressing on in your memories.

You can’t purge the weight of your sins.

Maybe it’s okay, then, that you wake up with scratched up arms sometimes.

It’s a visual reminder.

_…There you go, thinking like Chara again._

 

. . .

 

You haven’t stepped outside at all today, and it’s a beautiful day out. Birds are singing, flowers are blooming. Whatever steps you made to get here, the sun is shining, and you’re alive and here with Chara and Toriel and Sans and Papyrus and all of your friends to experience its warmth.

You decide to go out and play a game of catch.

 

 

**Author's Note:**

> OH HEY it's my first fic on ao3!! Let me know what you think ;o;
> 
> I'll possibly post a detailed explanation of how Chara's soul / ""demons"" work since that's a headcanon of mine in and of itself? (might just be over on tumblr though)


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